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Stop Trying To Get People On Your Bus

Joe Stephens

Joe Stephens

CEO at Motor City Industrial

Published Sep 10, 2015

The concept of recruiting is often reduced to a single, over-quoted phrase in organizations: "Get the right people on the bus." The statement was first introduced by the author Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. In the book, Collins describes the characteristics of those companies that make the leap from "good" to "great" organizations. Chapter 3, "First Who, Then What," deals with the issue of team development. Collins uses the analogy of getting the right people on the bus to explain that you must first have the "correct" team members to accomplish your goals. Unfortunately, the quote is often the only part of the book people remember, and it fails to convey the complex concept Collins describes. Yes, we want to have the right people on our bus, but it isn't enough to look for people with the most successful backgrounds, regardless of the circumstances of that success. The deeper challenge is to define performance metrics and interview questions that align with an overall team strategy and vision.  Building a team isn't just about amassing high performers; it's about creating a culture, setting a pace, and having a common view of where the organization is going. To build on Collins' analogy, there's nothing gained in getting a superstar talent on your bus if they're going to disrupt the other passengers, slow down the ride, and try to steer you off course.

So, how do we determine when someone is a match?  It starts by understanding your organization's culture and considering how the candidate will embrace and affect it. Companies don't have a culture – they are one, and each new member will contribute something that changes it. It is the interplay of all these contributions that form the overall culture. This is a difficult dynamic to control, so the best bet is to keep it simple.  When we create lists of cultural traits to look for when building the team, we tend to include too many characteristics. The list of traits we want in an employee is often too long, and the ones we seek in a manager are often unrealistic. The goal should be to narrow it down to the very core of who your organization is – two or three things that are paramount to all others.  For me, it boils down to two easily observable considerations: 1) How do my team members behave with our customers? And 2) Do they relate well with co-workers and different groups of people within the organization? Work ethic is important, but only if it aligns with our culture. After all, you can work hard and still treat customers and co-workers badly.

Culture isn't about abstract traits and characteristics; it's about beliefs and, above all, behavior. The culture of your team, and therefore your organization, will be defined by the predictability of behavior within the group. That predictability is how the culture is communicated and reinforced. When a customer is upset, is it common in your organization to urgently pursue reconciliation? If an employee is struggling, is it common among members of your team to react with concern, or contempt?  The challenge is to foster the most essential behaviors and strive to make them highly predictable in your organization.

When you meet a candidate, do they embody what you want your company to be? How can you tell if a candidate matches your culture? Start by asking them how they would improve their last company. Their answer will most likely tell you what they value. At a minimum, it will tell you how they approach customers and co-workers. Ask them specific questions about how they would handle a situation that's a common issue within your organization. Is their way of handling the situation similar to how it's typically handled by current team members? Does it reflect those key behaviors that define your culture? The point is, how new members behave is far more important than how successful they've been (within a different cultural environment). Ultimately, their success will depend on their ability to function within the existing culture of your organization.

Pace is not a part of culture. It is plain old speed of work. It's not that difficult to determine skills and abilities. The candidate either knows how to do the work or they don't. The question that's more difficult to answer is, can he or she keep up? Smaller organizations (and more aggressive ones) move quickly. Decisions are made on the spot without committee. Larger organizations (and more bureaucratic ones) move slower. Often, decisions are reviewed by cross-functional teams, and collaboration is critical to evaluate the effect on the organization as a whole. When considering a candidate, ask yourself if the person will be comfortable operating at your organization's pace. An employee coming out of a startup company could find meetings and committees frustrating and counterproductive. Conversely, if a team member expects several meetings before making decisions, they could gum up the works in a faster-paced organization. Pace problems with your existing team are easy enough to spot. Discerning them in a potential hire requires a little more investigation. One approach is to give them three decisions to make in the interview – for example, "Could you do a job shadow next Friday?" or "Could you get me five more professional references?" It has to be something that requires a certain degree of effort so that they can demonstrate their pace of work. Their immediate response won't necessarily demonstrate performance, but it will certainly reveal their urgency. Compare the candidate's reaction to those of high performers on your team. Are their answers similar? Do the concerns they raise about the request reflect an attitude set on accomplishing the task, or do they spend a great deal of time trying to analyze the expectation and evaluate its purpose? The goal here is to find out what pace they operate at and if it matches your organization's pace.

The final piece is vision. Ask yourself this question: "Does this candidate believe what I believe about where our company should go?" Different opinions aren't a problem, but different directions are. Growing and capturing market share within your industry requires strategy, and that strategy is the lens through which your team approaches decisions. The big questions of "Where are we going?" and "How do we get there?" drive thousands of small decisions every day. When a person is added to your team, they will inevitably make some of those decisions, and if their sense of where the organization should be headed is significantly different from yours, they will become an anchor. When interviewing candidates, try to uncover potential vision conflicts in their prospective job duties. If the individual is a marketing candidate, ask them what they feel the most effective communication tools are. If they divulge that they consider social media a waste of time, and your company just set up a HootSuite account, then they're an unlikely fit. Yes, everyone has a boss, and every boss has to communicate what they want from the team, but in the absence of explicit instructions (i.e., in most instances during the day) employees rely on a common vision to guide individual decisions.  Will the candidate buy into that common vision, or do they have a totally different view of where the organization should be heading?

An organization's culture, pace and vision will tend to homogenize over time, whether you want them to or not. It's natural. People who don't fit will leave, and people who do will stay. Given this self-reinforcing tendency, we have to guard these elements like they're the secret sauce – because they are.  Remember, culture, pace and vision are shaped by the collective dynamic of all members. Those who enter your organization will change it, even if the changes are unintentional.  With this in mind, understanding a candidate's cultural fit, pace of work, and strategic vision is much more important than knowing if they will perform. Any successful organization already has a critical mass of people who contributing at a high level. The question is, will the new hire enhance this success, or drain it? It's not enough to get talented people on our bus – first, we need to make sure they'll fit in, keep up, share our vision, and ultimately improve the ride.